Currently in the United States there are billions of square feet of tenant occupied (or controlled) real estate in both commercial and residential settings. These properties are managed by a variety of entities including public and private real estate investment trusts (“REITs”), property management companies, private property owners, etc. The management of these properties typically includes providing maintenance and repair of various building systems enjoyed by tenants such as electrical power, water, HVAC, etc. Often times the buildings or the land that they reside on will also require maintenance and repair. Depending of the size of the building and the nature of its use, the number of service requests being performed can be substantial, especially over time.
Unfortunately, even in large facilities, maintenance and repair tasks are often requested, scheduled, tracked, performed and checked in an ad hoc manner. By way of a hypothetical, but illustrative example, a tenant has noticed a failed light fixture in a tenant-occupied office building. The tenant looks up the property manager's phone number and ends up leaving a voice mail message for property manager because he/she is working on other issues. When the property manager receives the voice mail message he/she calls a service vendor he/she is comfortable with, in this case an electrician. A number of conversations and exchanged voice mails take place until the tenant, property manager and electrician schedule a time to perform the necessary servicing at an expected price. The request for service and its scheduled repair may be recorded in a notebook, an electronic organizer and on a task list by the tenant, property manager and electrician, respectively. Once the task has been completed by the electrician, he/she will generate an invoice to the property manager or accounts payable department who does not contact the tenant to inquire about the completion of the requested task and the quality of the service provided. The property manager approves the electrician's invoice and the accounts payable department records the approval and issues the appropriate compensation. In this example, information about the problem and its servicing is recorded in an ad hoc fashion in different unrelated systems both within the property manager's organization and between the tenant, service vendor and property manager.
The current ad hoc system, while pervasive, has significant number of shortcomings and inefficiencies. Often, service requests are either not logged and tracked, or if they are, it likely requires a separate entry of data by the property manager into a computer program that itself required installation and maintenance. Importantly, the tenant, property manager and service vendor may all have different versions of the service required and status. Discrepancies between what the service required is and the status of repairs are a source of inefficiency and frustration for all parties. Once the work is completed, clear and consistent records are often not kept to permit analysis of service request and vendor performance patterns. The current ad hoc system also often fails to provide fast and timely updates. Another failure of the current system is the often unaddressed need to formalize procedures so important points are not overlooked, such as asking the tenant for feedback.
Depending on the size of the service request and other variables, the property manager may wish to initiate a request for quote (“RFQ”) process in order to obtain the best competitive bid. Under the current ad hoc system, this is often done with via phone calls or through the mail, which is slow and inefficient. Even though at least one Internet-based company, i.e., Onvia.com (http://www.onvia.com/), appears to provide for competitive bidding, the RFQ process is not limited to a pre-selected group of service providers, so time is wasted sorting through undesired or questionable responses, also such systems are not designed for the property management and are not easily adapted by participants.
Given the problematic nature of the current ad hoc system of handling service requests, it would be desirable to provide a system which overcomes these limitations.